


Fade This One to Black

by the_rat_wins



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, De-Aged Ian Gallagher, Happy Ending, M/M, Magical Mickey Milkovich, Shameless Big Bang, Suicidal Imagery, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 18:13:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4446578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rat_wins/pseuds/the_rat_wins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Who are you?” Ian demands, legs braced apart like he’s ready to take off running down the street. “How do you know my name?”</p>
<p>“Don’t go,” Mickey chokes out. “Please, just . . . just give me a second, OK?”</p>
<p>(AU set during 4x7. Mickey will do whatever it takes to get Ian back, no matter where it takes them.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fade This One to Black

**Author's Note:**

> Please see the end notes for detailed warnings, if you're worried about the tags. Read safely.
> 
> Thanks to my beta readers, K and R. Not only do they not watch Shameless, they aren't even in fandom. And yet they _still_ read this for me. True friendship.
> 
> Thank you so much to [theunforgivingminute](http://theunforgivngminute.tumblr.com/), who went above and beyond for this Big Bang. I'm honored to be able to include your art with my story. <3
> 
> Also thanks to [magneticdice](http://magneticdice.tumblr.com/), for being an awesome moderator for this challenge!
> 
> Lastly, this concept was originally inspired by [ this Tumblr post.](http://the-rat-wins.tumblr.com/post/125262891847/love-elotes-liftupyourhands-fact-mickey/)

 

When Mickey finds Ian, he’s already dead.

It hasn’t been long. His hands are still limp and warm, even though he’s lying in the snow in jeans and a tank top. But he’s not breathing. His eyes are glazed.

_No._

 

Mickey doesn’t remember getting back to the house. He doesn’t remember deciding to take Ian back to the house with him.

He isn’t thinking.

 

Except . . .

_No._

 

The skull has been above his bed as long as he can remember. Aunt Rande says his aunt on his mother’s side gave it to him, but Mickey doesn’t remember her.

He doesn’t remember his mother, either.

He remembers . . . lights. Little globs of glowing light, purple and red and blue, bouncing around his room when he was little, like fairies from some stupid Disney movie.

The skull wasn’t above his bed then.

Maybe.

 

Apparently he gets Ian into his room without anyone seeing. When Mickey snaps out of it, he’s sitting on the bed next to Ian.

Next to Ian’s body.

And Mickey’s hand is reaching out, and it’s resting on Ian’s chest, right above his useless fucking heart. And he’s thinking calmly, _Stop._

The silence that settles around the bed is like waking up in the winter after a snow, before anyone else is moving, and the whole city is muffled and quiet. Every breath is pressed into silence before it even makes its way out of his mouth.

Ian’s still not breathing. But—

In the weird, long-distance, riflescope way that Mickey’s brain is functioning right now, Ian’s like a piece that’s been taken off the chessboard. No longer in play. He’s there, off to the side, waiting. For now.

The next three pieces to be moved are the skull, the butterfly knife, and Mickey himself.

 

He sits at the table. There are piles of other people’s opened mail, the dishes from breakfast and from dinner the night before, and three half-empty bottles of whiskey. He pushes all that to the floor, and sets the skull in the middle of the bare table.

It stares back at him with gaping eye sockets, and he loses himself staring at the darkness inside. The shadowed space where the brain had been.

As he stares, he can hear his heartbeat, pumping blood, _push-pull, push-pull, push-pull._ _H_ e can hear the air whooshing in and out of his lungs.

The light in the room shifts weirdly, makes it look like the skull is wavering in front of his eyes. He can’t look away. He doesn’t want to. If he looks hard enough—

After another second, he stands up. He strips off his dress shirt, leaving his t-shirt on. Then he reaches for the knife, flips it open, pulls the blade down his arm, then lets it fall to the floor. He props his arm up at the elbow, watches the blood pumping out in sad little spurts. It splatters gently onto the skull, dribbles around the eye sockets, drips down the face.

It looks like it’s crying.

He’s on the floor now, lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, _white white white_ , harsh fluorescent light hitting the white paint.

The shower is running somewhere in the house, a gentle sound of falling water, like rain hitting the pavement. Water running, blood running, blood drops hitting the floor . . .

He closes his eyes.

 

When he opens them again, the house is dark and cold, and a girl in a too-big, ratty sweatshirt is crouched next to his head, staring at him.

“The fuck—” he mutters, and rolls over, trying to get to his feet, but his legs are shaking and won’t hold him, so he ends up lying down with his knees under him, his throbbing head still resting on the floor between his arms.

There’s no blood on his arms. There are no cuts.

Mickey manages to turn his head just enough to look at the girl on the floor next to him, and she stares back silently, her eyes wide.

“Who the fuck are you?” he mutters. “What happened?”

She frowns, then spreads her hands out as if to say _Look around, idiot._

He grimaces, then manages to lift his head.

The house isn’t just dark and cold. It’s also empty. The kitchen table is still there, but the skull and knife are gone. Everything else, the furniture, all their stuff, is gone too.

There’s no color, anywhere. The floor is gray, the walls are gray, and all he can see out the bare windows is a dim gray fog.

“Fuck,” he says quietly. He drops his head back down to the floor, but the girl crouched next to him grabs his shoulder and shakes him sharply.

“Jesus, _what_?” he says. She stares at him with her freaky huge blue eyes, but doesn’t say anything.

“C’mon, use your words, Lassie,” he says. “What?”

Her face gets cold, and then she opens her mouth, but no words come out. She just opens it wide and shows him the black, sucking void inside her face.

“Shit!” He recoils and ends up on his ass, scrambling backward to get away from her.

Now she’s laughing at him, dry little clicks in the back of her throat. But she’s not lunging for him, or trying to eat him, or whatever the hell, so after a second, he relaxes.

“God, what the _fuck_ are you?” he says, and she stops laughing. She stares at him some more, and then turns and gestures toward his bedroom.

Toward Ian.

That’s enough to get him to his feet. He grabs onto the table and hauls himself up, then makes his way across the room, one hand against the wall to keep him from toppling over.

But when he gets to the doorway, it’s the same thing: no dresser, no bed. No Ian.

_“Fuck.”_

He’s down on his knees again, and he can feel something rising in his throat, vomit or screaming or tears.

No. No. It didn’t work.

( _What_ didn’t work? He doesn’t know. But it didn’t.)

The girl’s hand closes on his shoulder, and it’s shockingly warm and strong. She’s standing solid behind him.

“Where is he?” he whispers. It must be him talking, but it doesn’t sound like him. “Where did he go?”

She shakes him again, more gently this time, and he looks up at her. One hand is on his shoulder, and the other is in a fist against her chest. Over her heart. She raises her eyebrows meaningfully, then thumps the fist against her body.

“Huh?” he says. She rolls her eyes, and her lip curls with annoyance. _What, are you an idiot?_ She gestures around the house, then hits her heart with her fist again.

“Home?” he says. “He’s . . . he’s home?”

She shrugs. _Maybe._ Then jerks her thumb at the door. _Better get looking._

Mickey blinks up at her and lets out a shaky breath.

“Yeah. OK.” He leans hard against the door frame, climbing to his feet and shaking her hand off in the process. She tugs his arm, and he turns around to face her.

“What?” he says.

Now that he’s standing, he can see that she’s small, even smaller than him. Her face is narrow and hard and determined.

She takes both his hands in hers, and turns them so she can see his tattoos. Her mouth quirks, like she’s fighting back a smile. Then her expression turns serious again, and she drops his left hand and brings the right closer, studying the black lines. She turns his hand one way and then another. Finally she touches her finger to his knuckles, dragging it in quick motions across the letters.

Everywhere she touches, her finger leaves behind a thin, bright line that shines against the fading ink. Mickey exhales shakily. It doesn’t hurt, but he can feel it, an itchy tingle under the skin where he can’t scratch.

She’s rewriting the letters. Changing them into shapes—words?—that he doesn’t recognize.

Once she’s satisfied with his right hand, she drops it and picks up his left, does the same thing. The weird letters shine brightly for a second, and then they fade, leaving only the familiar tattoo behind.

The girl grabs his hands and squeezes them again quickly, then drops them like they’re burning her. She nods, apparently satisfied. Mickey blinks, confused.

She reaches behind her and takes a gun out of the waistband of her jeans. He starts to back away, but she reaches out and presses it into his hand.

It shines weirdly, reflecting light that isn’t in the room. The grip is warm in his palm, the only warm thing he’s felt here, besides her hands.

He looks from the gun to her face, and she gives him another tiny, stern nod.

“Uh, OK,” he says. And then, “Thank you.”

She makes a dismissive face and pushes him toward the door. With his hand on the doorknob, he turns to look back at her, standing straight and lonely in the middle of the room. Her face is tired, so tired. And sad. She looks like she’s about to say something, then her lips tighten and she jerks her head at the door.

_Go on._

He goes.

 

The fog outside the door clears a little as he starts to walk down the street, just enough that he can see halfway down the block on either side. It looks just like the video games he played when he was a kid—like the things around him don’t exist until he gets close enough to see them.

It’s weird.

He grips the gun tighter as he moves down the street. Shadows flicker on the edges of his vision, but never get close or clear enough for him to see what they are. The buildings are gray and empty in the same way the inside of the house was. Instead of flashing neon and bright signs, everything is blank or unreadable. A few houses have ragged curtains in the windows—or maybe they’re just more restless shadows.

There’s no one on the street. There are no cars.

Mickey starts off walking, but speeds up to a half run as he gets farther from the house. There’s a weird pressure in the air, like the feeling right before a thunderstorm breaks. He can hear his own breathing loud and harsh in his ears.

Good thing he could find his way to the Gallagher house in his sleep, because this shit is freaky as fuck.

The whole time he’s running, he’s still searching the sidewalk and the fog. Ian can’t possibly be walking, but maybe he’s lying somewhere. Lying in an alley, alone—

_No._

Mickey stops thinking and focuses on moving. After a few more minutes, the Gallagher house looms out of the fog up in front of him. All the windows are blank and dark, the fence is falling apart, and the front door is a featureless slab.

There’s a boy in a blue jacket sitting on the steps, head down, arms around his knees.

A boy with red hair.

Mickey’s heart starts pounding out of control, and he swallows jerkily, lowering the gun.

“Ian?” he says, the word wrenching itself out of his throat before he can even decide whether it’s a good idea or not.

The boy on the steps looks up, and Mickey’s heart lurches.

It’s not Ian. This kid is young, maybe only ten or eleven. Sure, he has Ian’s hair—fire engine red, the brightest thing Mickey’s seen since he got here—and hell, when Mickey gets closer, he can see that the kid has freckles, too, enough to rival Ian’s when they first met.

He even has the same tough-guy tilt to his chin, the same uneven jaw.

But it’s not Ian.

“I can’t get in,” says the kid, and his voice is small and scared. “I yelled and yelled, but no one heard. Fiona should be home, but she didn’t open the door.”

_Holy shit._

“ . . . Ian?” Mickey says again.

“Who are you?” the kid says. He looks like he’s on the verge of crying. “Do you know what happened to them? They wouldn’t just go away and leave, not without telling me.”

“I—” Mickey says, and the rest of the sentence dries up in his mouth. His feet have been carrying him closer and closer to the stairs, and now he’s stumbling forward and grabbing blindly, pulling Ian into his arms.

One of Ian’s fists comes up and tries to hit him in the stomach. Ian’s twisting, struggling to get away, but Mickey just grips him tighter, breathing hard. After a second, he can hear himself muttering hoarsely, like a crazy person, over and over.

_“No no no no no no no no . . .”_

His knees give out, and he tips sideways onto the stairs, taking Ian down with him, still struggling in his arms. The impact jars them both, and Ian breaks away and scrambles onto the sidewalk, leaving Mickey sprawled out alone, stunned.

“Who are you?” Ian demands again, legs braced apart like he’s ready to take off running down the street. “How do you know my name?”

“Don’t go,” Mickey chokes out, and almost starts laughing. “Please, just . . . just give me a second, OK?”

Ian studies him carefully, spots the gun still gripped in his hand. Then he looks up and down the block. At the cold, empty house in front of him. Slowly, he crouches on the sidewalk, still eyeing Mickey cautiously.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asks after a second.

“I, uh . . .” Mickey’s at a loss. He’s got to pull it together. “Nothing. I’m just—” He tries to wipe his cheeks dry with the back of his hand. “I’m just really glad to see you, man.”

“To see _me_?” says Ian suspiciously. “I don’t even know you.”

“Yeah,” says Mickey. “Yeah, you do.” He can feel another crazy laugh trying to fight its way out, but he chokes it back. Can’t scare him off. Not now.

“Yeah?” says Ian, challenging. “Then what’s your name?” That stubborn chin again. Fuck. Fuck. That’s Ian, all right.

“I’m Mickey,” he says. Ian’s face is blank, and Mickey’s heart sinks. “Mickey Milkovich?” he tries again.

Ian scoffs. “You’re not him. He’s Lip’s age. He got suspended last month for kicking a teacher in the balls.”

If Ian’s ten, then Mickey would have been thirteen. “Coach Newton,” he says after thinking for a second. “Man had it coming, I’ll you that.” Ian looks startled, but then his eyes narrow again.

“You’re not him. So quit lying and tell me who you are.”

Stupid, stubborn Ian. Mickey wants to grab him again, hold on till he’s sure Ian is really there, but the kid will definitely bolt if he does.

“Hand to fucking God, I’m Mickey,” he says. “I came here to get you, OK?”

“You came here?” Ian says. “From where?”

“Somewhere, uh . . .” Mickey swallows. “Somewhere else.”

Ian’s eyes widen. “Wait. Wait.” He stands up and walks over to the stairs, then sits down next to Mickey, staring at him intently. “Are you”—he lowers his voice, even though there’s no one around to hear—“are you from the _future_?”

Oh god. What a nerd. _No wonder he joined ROTC. He would have gotten the shit kicked out of him otherwise._

“Kinda,” Mickey says after a second, and he can’t help but smile at Ian’s face. The kid looks like his eyes are about to bug out of his head.

“Whoa. Whoa. Are you serious? Prove it!” Ian demands. “What am I doing in the future? Am I in the army?”

Mickey’s heart thumps painfully, but he tries to keep his face still.

“I can’t tell you stuff like that,” he says, improvising. “It could fuck shit up. Didn’t you ever see _Back to the Future_?”

“Oh my god, I love that movie!” Ian gushes. “Wait.” He stops, looking suspicious again. “How do I know you’re really from the future, if you won’t tell me anything about it?”

Mickey shrugs. “Guess you’re just going to have to trust me.”

“Oh yeah? And why would I do that?”

“Because I—” He stops. Takes a breath. “Because someone who loves you sent me here to take care of you. So we’ve gotta stick together till I can get you home. OK?”

“Someone who loves me?”

“Yeah.” He breathes slowly, in and out, trying to keep it together.

“Fiona? Why isn’t she here? Why did she have to send you instead?”

Mickey shrugs again, and Ian looks annoyed.

“You’re stuck with me, OK, kid? Better get used to it.”

“Don’t call me kid,” Ian retorts, fed up with Mickey already.

Mickey tries to stifle a grin. Ian’s here. He’s OK. Well, not totally OK. But Mickey can work with this. They’ll figure the rest out, somehow.

He looks down at Ian for a second, studying him, trying to see Ian, real Ian, in his face. The kid glares back.

There’s something black and wet-looking inching up his shoulder, and Mickey reaches out to brush it off. But as soon as his hand gets close, the thing slithers away.

“Holy _shit_ ,” Mickey says, grabbing Ian’s shoulder and turning him around. A mass of slithery black maggots drop off Ian’s back and break apart, wriggling away into the mist. Ian shouts and bats at them, but they’re moving too quick for him, and soon they’re gone.

Ian’s eyes are huge again, and he’s breathing hard. “What were those?”

“No clue,” says Mickey, trying to sound less freaked than he is. “You OK? Did they fucking . . . bite you or something?”

“I—I don’t think so,” Ian says shakily.

“Then let’s get the hell out of here before something worse shows up.” Mickey stands and offers his free hand to Ian.

Ian looks up at him doubtfully for a second, but then he grabs Mickey’s hand and lets himself be pulled to his feet.

Mickey hangs onto him as they head down the street, tiny tendrils of fog curling around their feet.

“Where are we going?” Ian asks.

“The El,” Mickey says, and he isn’t sure why at first. Just seems right. But now that he thinks about it . . . “We need a map,” he says, more confidently. “So we can figure out how to get the fuck out of here.”

If they can get back to the real world, maybe Ian will be OK again. _Or he’ll be dead again._ No, don’t think about that now. One step at a time.

“OK, sounds good,” says Ian after a second. He tightens his grip on Mickey’s hand, and as freaked out as Mickey is right now, he can’t help the surge of happiness in his chest as he looks down at Ian’s pale, resolute face. He’s here. He’s OK. They’ll be OK together.

_Gonna keep him safe. Won’t fuck it up this time. Promise._

 

There’s no one at the El station, either. Ian lets go of his hand to duck under the turnstile, and Mickey jumps over. The fog is thinner on the platform—he can see the tracks stretching off into the distance on either side.

The electronic boards that should be showing the countdown to the next train are blank. Big surprise.

But there’s a map behind the smeary plastic of the display board in the middle of the platform. It’s a spiderweb of black and blue lines and tiny dots that make the bright color-coded CTA map Mickey’s used to look like something cute designed for preschoolers.

“Shit,” he mutters, leaning closer and trying to read the words next to each bright silver dot. Every time he manages to puzzle out half of something, the letters fade and brighten, or start wiggling around. “What the fuck.”

Ian hunkers down next to him. “Weird,” he says. “What’s wrong with it?”

“How the hell should I know?” Mickey says, annoyed. “Whatever’s wrong with this whole fucking place.” He closes his eyes for a second, the glowing, wiggly shapes of the letters still dancing on the insides of his eyelids. Fuck. _Fuck._ How is he supposed to take care of Ian if he can’t even read a fucking map? He grits his teeth and tries to breathe. He can’t freak out. He’s got to keep it together, for Ian. If the _fucking_ map would just _fucking_ stay _still_  . . .

He slaps his hand against the plastic in frustration.

“Whoa,” says Ian quietly, and Mickey’s eyes snap open.

The map is frozen, all the blue and black lines neatly connecting, the silver dots and letters shining brightly.

“How did you do that?” says Ian in awe.

Mickey stares at the map, then slowly lowers his hand.

The letters stay in place.

“Uh,” he says. “OK. Good.” He rubs his stinging hand against his jeans, then leans forward to study the map again.

The basic shape is still Chicago, but none of the train lines are labeled, and none of the station names are the same. Most of them don’t even look like they’re in English, and the ones that are sound like something from a shitty fantasy movie.

“Department of Fate?” he says, squinting at a dot on the north side of the river, next to where the Wrigley Building is in the real world. “Are you kidding me? That’s some apocalyptic bullshit right there.”

“Fate doesn’t have to mean something bad,” Ian says, distracted, still studying the map. “It just means, like, whatever’s supposed to happen.”

Mickey turns and stares at him.

“How the fuck do you know that?” he says. “You’re in, like, fourth grade.”

Ian looks confused and shakes his head a little. “I—I don’t know. I don’t know how I know. I just do.”

“OK.” Mickey looks at him for another second. Really looks. Sees the circles under his eyes, the lines of worry on his forehead. He doesn’t look much like a kid right now. He looks—tired, mostly. Kind of sick. Like all of seventeen-year-old Ian’s shit is somehow being carried on ten-year-old Ian’s shoulders.

Nothing Mickey can do about it here, though.

“Fate, huh?” he says. “OK. Let’s check it out, see if they can tell us how to get the hell out of here.”

“Is that a good idea?” Ian says. “Couldn’t we, I don’t know, get in trouble or something? If we’re not supposed to be here?”

“Maybe,” Mickey says. “You got a better plan, short stuff, feel free to speak up.”

Ian rolls his eyes.

“Fine. What are we going to do, walk to downtown?” he demands. His kid annoyed voice sounds basically like his normal annoyed voice, just higher. “With creepy maggot things or whatever crawling all over us?”

“Nah, I was thinking we could take the train,” Mickey says, and points over Ian’s shoulder to the silent train that’s pulling into the station at the far end of the platform. Ian turns to look, then stares up at Mickey, grinning. Mickey grins back.

The train doors slide silently open, and almost immediately, the fake _ding-dong_ and the “Doors closing” announcement rings out. It’s weirdly flattened by the fog, but otherwise it sounds just like the trains back home.

“Shit!” Mickey says, and they book it down the platform. Ian’s in the lead, but Mickey’s right behind, because hell if he’s letting Ian out of his sight for one goddamn second in this place.

They skid onto the train right as the doors shut, and then stand for a second, bent over, trying to catch their breath. Ian’s hanging onto one of the poles, and Mickey drops down into an empty seat.

Actually, all the seats are empty, except for one at the very end of the car, where a saggy old white man in a faded t-shirt, a baseball cap, and sunglasses is staring straight ahead. He doesn’t turn to look at them.

Ian and Mickey stare at him for a few seconds, wary.

“Should we ask him?” Ian finally whispers.

“Ask him what?”Mickey hisses back.

Ian gestures around exasperatedly, and Mickey shakes his head.

“Just chill out,” he mutters.

“Fine,” Ian says, and drops sulkily into the seat next to him, arms crossed, legs kicking the air. Mickey can feel a stupid, fond smile trying to crawl across his face.

Ian stares crankily out the window across from them—or tries to, anyway. There’s nothing outside to stare at except gray fog.

Mickey’s openly grinning now, like some kind of goon, but _shit_ , it’s Ian, here, alive, throwing a shit fit. He’s sitting next to Mickey on the goddamn train, and sure, Mickey doesn’t really know where they are, and he doesn’t know how he’s going to get them home, or get Ian back to normal, but he’s _here_. He’s alive. It’s enough. For now.

 

There’s no way to tell how long they end up riding the train. There are no stops, no other passengers getting on and off. The electronic sign on the ceiling is blank, so they can’t see the time, and with no buildings or trees visible out the window, it’s hard to even see they’re moving at all.

After a while, when the novelty of being annoyed wears off, Ian starts throwing glances at Mickey, at the tattoos on his hands.

“When did you get those?” he finally asks. “How old were you?”

“Uh, fourteen,” Mickey says.

“Wait, how old are you now?” Ian says.

“Twenty,” Mickey says, trying to not think about his last birthday, spent drinking a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his room and then puking in the alley behind the Alibi just for a change of scenery, and finally getting his ass pounded by some strung-out redheaded woman in the bathroom, the whole time thinking _Ian, Ian, Ian . . ._

“Did it hurt?” Ian’s eyes are wide.

“Yeah, I guess. It’s a bunch of needles stabbing you, like, a million fucking times in a row.”

“Gross,” Ian says. “Soldiers get tattoos, so I’ll probably have to get one. I want a dragon, really big, on my shoulder.”

“Yeah?” says Mickey. Ian never told him that. Grew out of it, maybe. “Why a dragon? Aren’t you supposed to be, I don’t know, slaying them or whatever?” He remembers that dumb commercial, with the Marine and the dragon and the sword. Seems like something Ian would have eaten up.

“Yeah, I guess,” says Ian. “They’re cool, though. If dragons were real, I’d want to fly one. That’d be even cooler than killing it.”

“That would be cooler,” Mickey agrees. “You could get it to breathe fire on people you didn’t like and shit.”

“Right?” Ian says. Then his face falls. “Lip says that’s dumb, though.”

“What, taking out your enemies with a dragon?”

“No, I didn’t tell him that part. He thinks a tattoo of a dragon is dumb,” Ian says. “He says tattoos should have personal symbolism.”

“Yeah, well,” mutters Mickey, “Lip’s an asshole, so.”

“He is not!” says Ian, outraged. Mickey puts up a hand in mock surrender.

“Oh, OK. Sure. He’s a real stand-up guy, your brother.”

“He’s better than you are,” Ian says mutinously.

It’s stupid, but Mickey still feels kind of hurt. “Yeah,” he says after a second. “That’s probably true.”

Ian’s face is instantly full of remorse, and his mouth pinches up, looking all sad. “Sorry,” he mutters. He kicks at the air again, awkwardly.

“Don’t worry about it,” Mickey says. “Hey, if Lip was here, he’d probably get both of you home in about two seconds flat, huh?” Honestly, Mickey can’t stand the guy, but he wouldn’t mind having him here now. Or his brain, at least.

“Maybe,” Ian says. “But we’ll get home too, won’t we?” God. Ian’s always trusted too easy. No wonder he’s stuck here, with fucking _Mickey_ as his knight in shining armor. Unbelievable.

But, hey. If he’s the best Ian can do right now, then he’s gonna fucking do it.

“Yeah,” says Mickey. “We’re gonna get home.” And Ian nods like he believes him.

It’s hard to tell, but he’s pretty sure the train is finally slowing down. He grabs Ian’s hand again, then stands up and starts walking to the end of the train car. The random old guy is the only person he’s seen since the woman back in his house, and it seems stupid to walk away without at least trying to find something out from him.

“Hey, man,” Mickey says as they get close. The old man turns to face them, and for a second, Mickey thinks the guy just has some crazy weird sunglasses on. But they’re big. Too big. As big around as coffee cans, and faceted, so that Ian and Mickey’s faces are reflected back at them in a thousand tiny pieces.

“Oh, no _fucking_ way,” Mickey says, and he yanks Ian out of there, through the opening doors, and halfway down the platform before he even stops to think.

“Did you see that?” yells Ian. “That guy had _bug eyes_. He looked like a FLY. Holy shit!” His voice cracks, and Mickey can’t tell if it’s from excitement or fear. Probably both. Mickey’s heart is thumping way too fast to be healthy.

“Shit,” he mutters weakly as the train slides away behind them. “That was . . . holy shit.”

“Let’s go,” Ian says, tugging him toward the metal stairs that go down to the street. Mickey follows after him, shaking his head to clear it.

At the bottom of the stairs, the fog is even thicker than it was on the South Side. He can’t see the end of the block, or if they’re near the river, or even tell if there are any street signs. Of course, based on that map back at the El station, a street sign probably wouldn’t help much, anyway.

They stand for a minute, then Ian tugs his hand again. “Which way, Mickey?” he whispers.

Mickey swallows, then nods in front of them. “Up ahead,” he says, and tries to sound like he knows what the fuck he’s talking about.

 

For maybe the first time in his life, it looks like Mickey’s made the right move. The fog starts to thin, and up ahead he can see what looks like the Michigan Avenue bridge that crosses the river.

“There it is,” says Ian, and points in front of them and up.

In their world, the real world, the Wrigley building is white and gold, but here it’s shiny black stone, and there’s a cold light coming through the windows.

“Well, that looks . . . evil,” says Mickey. The only thing missing is a giant red eye at the top. He _knew_ this was some apocalyptic bullshit.

“Yeah,” says Ian. He looks nervous. “You think we should go?”

“I don’t think we’ve got a lot of other options,” says Mickey.

“Yeah. I guess not,” says Ian, but his eyes are still fixed on the building ahead, and his hand is kind of clammy.

“Let’s go,” says Mickey after a second, and they start up the street toward the bridge, their footsteps loud in the muffled silence of the fog.

“Fuck!” Ian shouts out of nowhere, yanking his hand hard. A too-tall shadow reaches out of the fog at them from the side, missing Mickey’s shoulder by an inch. But before he can get the gun up and in position to fire, Ian shouts and flings their joined hands up defensively. The thing rears back in shock, then backs away into the fog. Its big yellow eyes are swallowed up by swirling mist.

“Go, go, go!” Ian says, and they’re running together for the bridge.

The second that Mickey’s foot hits the wooden walkway, he can hear a chorus of screams, what sounds like hundreds of voices in pain, getting louder with every step.

“You hear that?” he shouts.

“Yeah!” Ian says, panting as he tries to keep up. “Where’s it coming from?”

“Don’t know,” Mickey says. And then, though he doesn’t have a reason to say it: “Don’t turn around, OK? Don’t look back.”

“OK!” Ian shouts over the wailing. “You neither!”

It’s coming from the river, he realizes after a few more seconds of pounding their way across the bridge. There’s no water underneath them, just a gray roiling mass of thick fog, and every few seconds he can see something reach out, a too-long arm, or a face, stretched and deformed with pain, screaming at him to stop, to help, _please, God, someone help_ —

He rips his eyes away from the river of fog, and focuses up ahead, Ian still running at his side, the gun slipping a little in his sweaty hand.

“C’mon,” he shouts to Ian. “Almost there. Don’t fucking stop, OK? Just keep running!”

They’ve made it more than halfway when something flings itself down in front of them, trailing mud and slime. “You . . . ,” it says, and reaches out a long, raw hand to touch Ian’s face.

Ian screams, and Mickey wrenches him away from it, shoving him ahead and then turning to empty the clip into the slimy, rotting pile of flesh. His knuckles are burning like someone’s holding a match to his skin. But he keeps firing. The thing gives a wheezing groan, and then collapses in on itself, bloodshot eyes rolling up in what’s left of its head.

Mickey doesn’t stop to savor his victory. He spins back around, grabs Ian by the arm, and staggers the rest of the way across the bridge, stumbling the last few feet, then tripping and landing on all fours, dragging Ian down with him.

The screams cut off like they never existed. Mickey stays crouched down, his breath loud in his own ears. The silence around them is deafening.

“You OK?” he asks Ian when he has enough air in his lungs to talk again.

“Yeah,” Ian whispers hoarsely. He’s on his back, leaning on his elbows, staring at the cloudy gray sky above them.

“Good,” Mickey says, and closes his eyes, just for a second. He breathes in and out, feeling his heart slowing down to a normal rhythm. He opens his eyes again, looks at his knuckles. No blisters. They’re not even red.

The gun is cool and heavy in his hand.

Ian climbs to his feet, tugging at Mickey’s arm. “C’mon,” he says. “We should keep moving, right?”

“Right,” Mickey says, and pushes himself up. He wipes sweat from his lip with the back of his hand, then grabs Ian’s hand and starts to walk unsteadily toward the entrance of the building.

He elbows in through the revolving door, smushing Ian into the same little glass section with him. They stumble out together into the huge lobby, their footsteps echoing over and over again.

There’s a security desk at the far end, and Mickey steers them grimly toward it, Ian marching a few steps in front, pale but determined. It makes his freckles stand out like he has a terrible skin disease.

When they get close enough to see what’s sitting behind the desk, Mickey’s expecting another bug-eyed horror. But instead it’s what looks like a thin, tall body with a long piece of white cloth hanging over its head, like a kid with a shitty ghost costume at Halloween who forgot to cut out the holes for eyes.

It swivels to face them as they get closer.

“We’re looking for the Fate Department,” Ian pipes up as soon as they’re within speaking distance. Mickey gripes his shoulder and feels him shaking like crazy. “Do you know where it is?”

The figure doesn’t move.

“Department of Fate,” Mickey says, trying to hide his fear with impatience, hand still locked in place on Ian’s shoulder. “Nothing? Hello? Anyone in there?”

The white-sheeted thing doesn’t move.

Mickey hears footsteps behind them, getting louder and closer every second. Ian freezes, too scared to even shake.

They turn and see a blond white woman in a nice pantsuit and high heels tip-tapping quickly across the marble lobby. Her face is calm, smooth. Somehow, that makes Mickey even more nervous.

“Mr. Milkovich?” she calls out, and he can’t help but raise an eyebrow.

“Yeah?” he says after a second, because what the hell. She walks the last few steps, then stops neatly in front of them, hands held behind her back, like she’s inspecting troops on parade.

“And Mr. Gallagher, of course,” she says, with a serene smile at Ian. He squints up at her suspiciously, but Mickey feels him relax a little. “Call me Moira. I’d like to speak with both of you, if you don’t mind.” She pauses, waiting for a response, but they just stare at her. “Shall we head upstairs?”

“Yeah, OK,” Mickey says, trying to pull it together. “ Whatever. Lead the way.”

She gestures toward the bank of elevators on the far wall. “Please, after you. I insist.”

_The better to stab us in the back, you crazy bitch?_ Mickey thinks, and offers a fake smile of his own. He pushes Ian ahead, keeping him as far away from her as possible.

Once they’re all inside the elevator, Moira presses one of the buttons. None of them have numbers, so Mickey has no idea how she knows where they’re going, but hey, it’s hardly the weirdest thing they’ve seen today.

No one says anything on the ride up. Out of the corner of his eye, Mickey can see Ian shifting nervously from one foot to the other. He reaches down and puts his hand on Ian’s shoulder. Ian glances up at him, and then smiles, probably trying to look brave or some shit. Mickey gives him a nod.

The doors slide open, revealing a long white hallway with doors on either side. There are no signs anywhere.

They follow Moira as she walks briskly down the hall. Mickey starts counting doors as they pass, in case he has to find their way back to the elevator without her.

She stops in front of one of the unmarked doors, pushes it open, and walks into a tiny windowless office. Ian and Mickey pause in the doorway, reluctant to follow, until she looks back at them expectantly. As they walk in, she takes a seat behind the desk inside. There’s no computer, just a single thin manila envelope with no writing on it.

Mickey and Ian hover awkwardly. There’s only one chair, and neither of them really wants to sit anyway. Finally, after she stares at them pointedly for a long second, Mickey sits down. He isn’t sure what to do with the hand that’s still holding the gun, so he rests it in his lap.

Moira reaches into the desk, pulls out a pair of glasses, and balances them delicately on her nose before she flips open the manila folder and studies it for a second.

“I trust you understand why you’re here,” she says, still reading.

_Shit._ “Hey, Ian, wait outside for a sec,” Mickey says.

“What? No!” Ian looks outraged. “What are you talking about? We have to ask her—”

“Look, Ian, just . . . just go, OK? I’ll be out in a sec. I promise.”

Ian looks at Moira, apparently willing to settle for any support he can get, but she just looks back at him. He scowls for a second, then rolls his eyes and stomps out of the office, slamming the door behind him. Mickey winces.

“So I take it Ian is not, in fact, aware of why he’s here,” she says, amused. Which—fuck her. Just, _fuck_.

“No, and he’s not gonna know, either,” Mickey says aggressively, sitting up straight and leaning forward across the desk. “Because I’m gonna get him the hell out of here, and you people, whoever you are, you’re gonna—” He chokes off, can’t even get the words out right. “You’re gonna fix it, OK? Make him the way he was before, and get us—get us home.”

“I see,” says Moira. Her tone is politely neutral. “And what makes you think so?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’?” Mickey says. To his horror, he realizes he’s starting to tear up. “Because it’s not—fuck, because he can’t just—” He lets out a shaky breath, wipes at his eyes with the side of his hand.

“Look,” he tries again. “It was an accident. If I’d just hung around the club for longer, or if—if I’d gotten there sooner.” He breaks off. “ _Shit._ It was a fucking mistake, OK? So—”

“A lot of people make mistakes, Mickey,” she says. The laughter is gone. Now she’s stone cold. “That doesn’t matter. All that matters is what—”

“No!” Mickey says. “You’re not listening. I’m not—I’m not _asking_ you to do this. I’m telling you. This is what’s happening. So, yeah. Tell me what to do, or fucking—I don’t know. Call your boss. Pull some strings. Whatever you have to fucking do. Ian’s not staying here. He’s coming back with me. And that’s it. That’s all. Got it?”

Moira looks at him for a long moment, expressionless. Then she takes off her glasses and leans back in her chair, looking thoughtful.

“Mickey Milkovich, you present a problem to me and my department. You should not have been able to do . . . basically anything that you’ve managed to do. People much older and wiser than you have tried and failed. Many of them. And yet, somehow, here you are, sitting in front of me and making demands.”

She pauses. Then she looks up again and pins Mickey with her stare.

“That said, you are far from my only problem. And I often find that the best way to deal with a problem is to turn it into a solution.” She gestures at his empty hand, motioning for him to hold it up.

Reluctantly, he raises his fist, showing her the tattoos.

“May I?” Without waiting for an answer, she reaches out and grabs his fist. He almost flinches away, but her grip is too strong. Her skin is cold—not cool, _cold_. And hard, like marble. She looks human on the outside, but—

Her fingers tighten, and he freezes.

Just like the girl back at his house did, she tilts his hand back and forth, studying the knuckles. Then she reaches out one cold finger and presses against the dash between “U” and “UP.”

The extra lines that the girl drew flare up brightly, stinging like a Fourth of July sparkler.

“Well,” she says, letting him go. “That explains some of it.” She eyeballs the gun, like she wants a closer look, but a glance at Mickey’s face seems to tells her that’s not going to happen. “Your mother—” she starts, her mouth twisting with what looks like distaste.

“What about her?” he says combatively, but his mind is racing. His mother. _Back at the house? Or—_

“Never mind,” Moira cuts him off smoothly. “The important thing is, I think you may be able to complete the task I have in mind.”

“Task?” Mickey says. “Are you fucking—Look, I’m not here for any of this fucking fairy-tale, twelve-labors bullshit, OK? I already told you. I’m taking Ian, and we’re going—”

“You’ve told me several things,” Moira says. “Now it’s my turn to tell you something.”

Her face is blank and distant again, like a statue. But her eyes are cold.

“You’re here, speaking to me now, not because you’re clever or because you’re brave. You’re here because you’ve gotten lucky.” Her mouth twists again as she glances at his hands. “ _Very_ lucky.” She closes her eyes for a moment, then opens them and looks at him piercingly.

“Please understand. Disposing of you directly is not my first choice. However, I have absolutely nothing to lose by doing so.” She sees him glance uncomfortably from side to side at the word _dispose_. “Oh yes, make no mistake, Mickey. You and Ian are both already dead. And unless I decide otherwise, that will remain the case.”

He knew. All along, from the first moment he saw Ian lying in the snow, from the second he touched the knife to his arm, he knew what it meant. But there’s something about hearing her say it so matter-of-factly that feels like a punch to the stomach. He can’t breathe.

The gun is heavy in his hand. His fingers tighten around it. She’s watching him. But maybe—

Before the idea has even fully formed, Moira’s arm is moving through the air, and there’s a blade up against his throat.

“’S that a fucking _sword_?” he wheezes. “How—” The edge of the blade scrapes against his skin, and he shuts up real fast.

She smiles. “As I was saying, disposing of you directly would not be my first choice. I’d prefer that we come to a mutually beneficial arrangement. However, if you’re not interested in my—what was it you said? —‘fairy-tale bullshit,’ we can end this here and now. Your choice.”

Mickey looks down at the sword, as much as he can without actually moving. There’s no way he’d be able to get the gun up before she cut his throat.

“Yeah,” he says. “OK. That’s, uh. That’s fair.”

She lowers her arm, and the sword somehow . . . slides out of existence. Like it was never there at all.

“I’m glad you agree,” she says. “As I said, I prefer changing problems into solutions.”

“OK,” Mickey says cautiously. “So, if I’m the solution . . . what’s the problem?”

 She smiles.

_Yeah, that can’t be good._

 

Ian is sitting outside the door, and judging from the look on his face, he’s not happy with Mickey. That’s fine. In fact, it makes two of them.

“What did she say?” Ian demands as Mickey walks as fast as he can down the hall, toward the elevator.

“Not a whole fuckin’ lot,” Mickey says, dodging the question. But Ian’s not going for it. He stops dead in the middle of the hallway and crosses his arms.

“Tell me why you didn’t want me to stay in there,” he says flatly. “I’m not going anywhere until you do.”

Mickey stops and turns around to face him, eyebrows rising. “Oh yeah?” he says. Sure, seventeen-year-old Ian could take him down easy—even though Mickey never gives him the satisfaction of admitting it, they both know it’s true—but this Ian is a shrimp. If Mickey has to pick him up and literally carry him out of here, he can. And he will.

Ian stares up at him, jaw set, eyes hard.

But it’ll be a hell of a lot easier if he doesn’t have to. They’re up against enough in this place. It’d be nice to have Ian on his side, fighting with him, not against him.

Mickey blows out an annoyed breath, then shakes his head. “OK, fine, whatever. But let’s get the hell out of here first. Walk and talk. Deal?”

Ian considers, studying Mickey’s face like he’ll be able to tell if he’s lying just by looking. Hell, maybe he can. Ian’s always been able to read Mickey easier than he’d like.

After a second, Ian nods, and they start back down the hallway, Mickey muttering out the number of doorways they’ve passed, until finally they’re back in front of the elevator. It slides open without them touching anything—freaky, but whatever—and Mickey punches the button closest to the bottom, hoping to god it’s the lobby and not the basement. He doesn’t even want to think about what kind of crazy-ass shit this building would have in the basement.

Ian stares straight ahead and Mickey leans uncomfortably from side to side as the numbers slowly tick down.

When the doors open into the echoing lobby with the white-sheeted figure at the other end, Mickey takes Ian by the elbow and steers him outside.

“Wait! You said—” Ian starts, and tries to pull away.

“Jesus, I know what I said. Just give it a minute, OK? We’re going down to the water. She said there’d be a boat down there. We gotta get in the boat and start moving. Then we’ll talk. Got it?”

Ian looks like he’s steeling for another fight. Mickey stops, drags a hand across his face. “Look, Ian. You remember the stuff we saw down there on the way here, right? The people?”

“Yeah,” Ian says.

“OK. She said she could keep all that shit off our backs, but only for long enough to get to the boat. So we gotta go, right now, before shit gets crazy again. Once we’re in the boat, I’ll tell you whatever you wanna know. Everything. But right now we gotta go.”

Ian hesitates, but only for a second. “OK, then let’s go,” he says, and starts walking toward the stairs that go down to the walkway along the river. Mickey looks behind them, grips the gun more firmly, and heads after him.

The thing tied up at the edge of the lapping gray water is barely big enough to rate the word _boat_. It’s a dented mental canoe, and it looks flimsy as fuck.

“I’ve never been in a boat,” Ian says nervously, his hand on the line. “There’s no oars or anything. How are we going to steer?”

“Seriously, you’ve never been in a boat?” says Mickey. “Don’t you want to be a Marine or some shit?” But he sticks the gun in his waistband, and starts untying the line while he talks. “Anyway, don’t worry about it. She told me what I gotta do. It’s gonna be fine. Promise.”

Ian eyeballs the canoe warily, but after a second he jumps in, only flailing a little. He sits down quick. “Coming?” he challenges Mickey.

“All right, all right, give me a second,” Mickey mutters. Honestly, he’s not any more comfortable with boats than Ian is, but Moira said this was the only safe way to get them where they need to go. _You were lucky on the way here,_ she’d said. _All the stations were elevated. But once the train goes underground, there’s no coming back from that, for either of you._

The boat is bobbing up and down in the water, and with the line untied, it’s starting to drift away from the shore. Mickey takes a deep breath and jumps, landing too hard and making the boat rock. Water slops over the sides.

“Watch it!” Ian says. They both grip onto the boat, and try to get used to the swaying.

Mickey pulls himself together first, loosening his grip on the sides and sitting back awkwardly. “You OK?” he says to Ian, who’s looking kind of green.

“Yeah,” Ian says, and swallows. “Can you do whatever you’re supposed to do now?”

“Uh-huh,” Mickey says, and wipes the sweat off his upper lip. He runs his hands up to the front of the canoe, and presses one against either side. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and thinks _Go_ , pushing at it the best he can with his mind.

The boat doesn’t move. It just keeps bobbing up and down in the water.

“Fuck,” he whispers. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“What are you—” Ian starts from behind him.

“Hang on,” Mickey mutters. “Just—hang on a second, OK?”

_Going_ isn’t enough. It’s just like any other kind of map or GPS or whatever. You can’t just say “go.” You have to say where.

“All right,” he says, cracking his knuckles and then taking hold of the boat again. This time, he focuses on the fuzzy memories in his mind. The gray concrete tower, the wilting flower beds lining the road, the squiggly lines of light on the ceilings of the hallways. The planes roaring overhead, their lights pricking the dark sky, one and then another and another, taking people away . . .

“C’mon,” he whispers. “Let’s go.” The skin over his knuckles is burning, the heat spreading from his hands to the metal, surging through the boat—and suddenly they’re cutting smoothly through the water, speeding away from the riverbank and the towering buildings, and the dark shapes that are starting to gather again in the fog.

Behind him, Ian lets out a whoop and punches at the air. Mickey slowly takes his hands away from the boat, but it keeps moving, without a pause. He slumps back and closes his eyes, weak from relief. He’s kind of shaking, so he presses his hands together and traps them between his knees until they can stay still on their own.

“That was _so cool_!” Ian says. “Even cooler than the map. Can you do stuff like that at home too, or only here?”

“I don’t know,” Mickey admits. Honestly, he doesn’t want to know. What Moira said, about his mom—“I did some stuff to get here, I guess, but I wasn’t really thinking about it.”

“What do you mean?” Ian says. “What stuff? Where is ‘here,’ anyway? Is that why you didn’t want me to hear whatever she had to say?”

“Kinda,” Mickey says, opening his eyes and leaning forward. The gun is digging into his back, so he reaches behind and takes it out of his jeans again.

As he wraps a hand around the grip, his tattoos flare up, burning his skin again. “Shit! Ow!” He doesn’t drop the gun, but he’s not going to be able to keep holding it, either. Not until whatever’s going on with his tattoos calms down. He slowly loosens his fingers, then tucks the gun between his leg and the side of the boat, wedging it in place.

Ian watches this procedure carefully, then goes back to staring at his face. “Well?”

Mickey sighs. He’s tried to avoid the question all along, mostly because if he didn’t have to explain what was going on to Ian, he could try to avoid thinking about it too closely himself. But he’s out of excuses, and they’re trapped in this boat together at least the next couple of hours. Something’s gotta give.

“OK. It’s like this,” he says awkwardly. “Uh. Well.” He rubs the back of his neck. “You—you died, OK?”

He stares at the bottom of the boat for a couple of seconds, scared to see Ian’s face. But finally the silence is too much, and he looks up.

Ian is—blank. “What?” he says, and now there’s almost a smile on his face. “What are you talking about? I’m right here.”

“You’re not—” Mickey breaks off, rubs a hand over his eyes. How can he explain it, when he doesn’t totally understand it himself? “You, the way you are right now, this isn’t how you really are. You’re—well, you’re older. You’re seventeen. And you—we . . .” Shit. He doesn’t want to get into them, all their shit. Hell, maybe ten-year-old Ian doesn’t even know he’s gay. They never really talked about it, his Ian. When he realized. How he’d felt about it. Now Mickey kind of wishes they had.

Wishes they’ll still have the chance.

He takes a breath and tries again. “Look. In the real world, you’re seventeen. And you ran away or whatever. Left home. Didn’t hear from you for months. None of us knew where you were. And then Lip asked me to help find you. Bring you home. And I did. I found you. You were—” _Nope, leaving that part out._ “You were . . . mad. At me. So, you wouldn’t come back with me, and I left you there, and then when I came back—” He’s babbling. He can hear his voice running on and on, stumbling ahead of his brain. Can’t stop seeing that image of Ian, lying curled up in the snow. _Shit._ “When I came back—” He breathes in harshly, almost a sob, dry and stuck in the back of his throat.

Slowly, he raises his head up to look at Ian again. Ian’s eyes are wide and scared as he stares at Mickey, confused.

“So, I took you home,” Mickey finally manages. “And I—I wasn’t really thinking about what I was doing, you know? I just did it, and then I was here, and _you_ were here, and—” Shit. _Shit._ He’s going to start fucking crying again in a second. He can feel the tears welling up, and he can’t stop them.

“Hey,” Ian says softly. He leans forward, and puts a gentle hand on Mickey’s wrist. “Hey. It’s all right.”

Mickey sobs for real this time, and he can’t help it—he drags Ian against him, wraps him in his arms, rocks him back and forth. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry I did it, I’m sorry I left you there, I’m so, so sorry, please just come back, please come back, please, please, please—”

Ian gets an arm around him, tries to hug him back, awkward. “Shh,” he says. “Shh, it’s OK. It’s gonna be OK.”

Mickey gives into it for a few seconds, lets himself bury his face in Ian’s shoulder (but it’s _not Ian_ , not really, god he misses him, he misses him so much), lets the sobs shudder out while Ian mutters soothing nonsense at him.

But as soon as he manages to get a full breath, he lifts his face, lets go of Ian. Wipes at the snot and tears. “Sorry,” he says. “Shit. I’m—I’m sorry, Ian.”

“It’s fine,” says Ian, but he looks totally freaked. “Are you . . . are you serious, about all that stuff? That I’m older, and that—” He stops, doesn’t seem to know how to say it.

“Yeah,” Mickey manages past the lump in his throat. “Yeah. But it’s OK. I’m gonna fix it. We’re gonna get out of here, and everything’s going to go back to the way it was before. I swear.” He puts all the belief he has into his voice, willing it to be true. Because if it’s not—if he can’t—

“How?” Ian says softly. There’s hope on his face. Hope and faith. Faith in Mickey, which is maybe the scariest thing he’s seen since he got here.

“I made a deal,” Mickey says. “With her. All we have to do is get rid of this . . . fucking monster thing for her, and then she’s gonna let us go home, and put everything back the way it should be. You and me, and—” He stops, sniffs hard, and wipes away the last evidence of his tears. “So, that’s what we’re doing. Any more questions, feel free to keep ’em to yourself, OK?”

Ian lets out a shaky laugh, and Mickey can’t help it. He smiles back.

He’ll never understands how he makes Ian laugh. The first time it happened—Ian laughing at some stupid thing he said after one of their rushed-as-fuck hook-ups at the Kash and Grab—Mickey remembers he stopped and just stared at him for a second. “What?” Ian had said, still laughing. Mickey hadn’t known what to say. _Thank you?_ “The fuck are you laughing at?” he’d snapped instead. But that had just made Ian laugh harder.

“So, where are we going? Where is it?” Ian says now. “The monster or whatever.”

Mickey makes a face. “It’s, uh. It’s at the airport.”

“Midway or O’Hare?” Ian asks without a pause. Mickey stares.

“I tell you there’s a fucking monster we gotta kill at the airport, and you’re asking me _which one_? You serious right now?”

Ian shrugs. “Midway’s easier to get to.”

“Yeah, from the South Side,” Mickey says. “Not from downtown. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. She said we can’t take the train, because it goes underground. She didn’t say why, but I’m fine with not finding out.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Ian says. “That guy with the bug eyes.”

“Exactly. She said we should stay on the river until, and I quote, ‘that’s no longer an option’—”

“Yikes,” says Ian.

“Right? Anyway, she said after that, we gotta walk. Which I’m sure is going to be a walk in the fucking park.”

“And then?” Ian says.

“What do you mean, ‘and then?’ Then we’re there. And we deal with the thing, and we go home.”

“Yeah, but what is it? How do we kill it?” Ian presses. _Damn it._ For that all Ian can be blind to obvious shit when he feels like it, when he knows he’s onto something, he’s like a goddamn pit bull.

Mickey sighs. “She wouldn’t tell me. And she wouldn’t tell me _why_ she wouldn’t tell me. Bitch. All she said was that ‘the form doesn’t matter.’”

“That’s weird,” says Ian. “What do you think it means?”

Mickey shrugs. “Fuck if I know. Sounds like some weird new-age shit to me.”

Ian bites his lip, looking worried. “Why wouldn’t she just tell us what it is? It’s like she wants us to fail.”

“Yeah, well, what else is new,” Mickey says. “People in charge never want to help people like us. Back home or here. We get out of this, it’s not gonna be because some supernatural freak in a suit did us a solid. Nah, we’ll deal with whatever it is when we get there. We don’t need her.”

“Yeah, OK,” Ian says. He leans back against the side of the boat.

“You tired?” says Mickey.

“A little, I guess.” Ian looks wiped. Pale, too, even paler than when they first got here.

“Better sleep while we have a chance,” Mickey says. “Don’t know how long we might have to walk, once this thing stops moving.”

“Yeah,” Ian says, his eyes starting to close. His head nods once, but then he jerks himself awake again. “Are you sure? I can stay up, if you want to sleep or whatever.”

“Nah, I’m cool,” says Mickey. The truth is, this place freaks him out so bad, he doesn’t think he could sleep even if he felt like it. Which he doesn’t. “Here, you’re gonna fall out if you sleep up against the side like that.” He tugs at Ian’s shoulder, pulls him down so he’s curled up in the bottom of the boat, his head in Mickey’s lap.

“This OK?” Ian says through a yawn, but his eyes are already shut.

“Yeah,” says Mickey softly. “Yeah, it’s fine, man.”

“’Kay,” Ian says. His breathing evens out almost immediately.

Mickey sighs and leans back, looking around them for the first time in a while. There’s almost nothing to see. Just the river water on either side, still and gray, and the video-game mist stretching out in every direction beyond that.

He reaches down and fumbles for the grip of the gun, next to his leg. When he finds it, he wraps his hand around it lightly. The metal is cool, and the tattoos on his hand stay dead. Relieved, Mickey holds it more firmly, and then hesitantly puts his other hand on Ian’s shoulder.

It’s funny. When they first started—doing whatever they were doing, Mickey hated it when Ian tried to touch him too much. Extra stuff, like running his fingers up and down Mickey’s arm while they fucked or sliding his hands across Mickey’s stomach. It made his skin ache in an unpleasant way, like running your tongue over the smooth, raw place where a tooth used to be.

But now he knows it was just because he’d been so numb for so long, any touch was painful.

Mickey lets out a breath and stares out across the water, comforted by the solidity of the gun in one hand and Ian’s warm weight pressed against him, watching the way the mist softly parts and swirls on either side of the boat. The fog was menacing when they were on the street walking through it, but here in the boat, surrounded by the water, he feels like it can’t touch them. Like they’re safe, at least for now.

He sighs once, twice, then feels his eyes start to drift shut.

 

When Mickey jerks awake, his first thought is that he fell asleep in the car, and that he woke up because his dad braked too hard at a stoplight.

But as soon as he opens his eyes, reality—or whatever weird-as-fuck shit is passing for his reality now—crashes in.

They’re still in the boat, but it’s tipped on its side. The river is gone. Instead, they’re resting on a bare stretch of concrete that stretches out as far as he can see. The clouds overhead are gone, and the sky is a blank expanse of blue. Somehow, even though it’s daytime, there’s no sun overhead.

“The _fuck_ ,” he whispers, rubbing his eyes against the strain of finally seeing out to the horizon. It should be better, being able to see what’s around them, but the emptiness is even more unsettling than the fog, somehow.

Ian is still sleeping. He’s so pale now, he almost looks like he did in the alley, curled up in the snow. Mickey’s breath catches, and he grips Ian’s shoulder, shaking him. “Hey,” he says. Then louder. “Hey!”

“What?” Ian mumbles, his eyes flickering open. “What’s going on?”

“You OK?” Mickey says, trying and failing to keep the worry out of his voice.

“Yeah, ’m fine,” Ian says, starting to sit up. Mickey slips his free hand under his elbow, helps him sit up. Ian shakes him off. “What happened to the river? Where are we?”

“Not sure,” Mickey says. “Guess this is what she meant by _no longer an option_.”

Ian looks a little better now that he’s sitting up, but he still looks tired, too, even though he’s been sleeping for however long.

This place is sucking what’s left of his life, bit by bit. Mickey chews on his lip for a second, staring at him.

“So what do we do?” Ian asks, turning to look up at him.

Mickey shakes himself out of his daze, and drags his eyes up to the concrete surrounding them.

“Gonna have to walk, I guess,” he says. “But fuck if I know which way.”

The second after he says it, there’s the unmistakable thrum of a plane engine above them. Something big, maybe a passenger jet. They both look up, craning their necks. Mickey turns every which way, trying to catch a glimpse of it, but somehow, he can’t see it.

“There!” Ian says suddenly, pointing toward the horizon on their left. The plane is high up and moving fast, an almost invisible glint of silver.

“Oh shit!” Mickey says, and jumps out of the boat before he can even think, dragging Ian with him. The impact of his feet hitting the concrete reverberates all the way up his body, and it hurts like a bitch, but he pelts after the silver glint as fast as he can, gun in one hand and Ian’s right hand gripped in the other.

“Mickey!” Ian cries out. “Slow down!” His legs aren’t long enough, and his breathing sounds choked and shallow.

“Can’t!” Mickey pants. “Gonna lose it in a second.”

“I— _can’t_ ,” Ian says, and stumbles. His hand slides out of Mickey’s, and he falls to his knees.

“Fuck!” Mickey says. He stops and turns, holds out his hand. “C’mon, Ian! We gotta go! Now!”

“Can’t,” Ian wheezes out. “It _hurts_.” His breath hisses with every word, and Mickey crouches down beside him, tucking the gun into his waistband, and rests a hand on his back—

—only to wrench it away again in horror. “Shit. Shit!” he says. Slimy, squirming black maggots are writhing in a thick layer all over Ian’s back. Some of them have already burrowed through his jacket, and Mickey rips it off, then has to choke back the urge to vomit. A handful of the maggots have chewed up his shirt and are half embedded in his flesh. There’s no blood, just pale, dead-looking flesh and wriggling black maggots.

“Ow,” Ian whimpers. “What is it? Why does it hurt so much? I can’t _breathe_.”

“Fuck, fuck, hang on!” Mickey says. “Just let me—” He doesn’t want to touch, can’t imagine how he’ll be able to get them out, but he has to try something.

Ian lets out another cry of pain, and then—

It’s like everything slows down, moving around him like the air is sticky jelly. Mickey suddenly feels calm, totally calm, like he has all the time in the world to figure out whatever he has to do next.

He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, then opens them again and looks down at the mess of Ian’s back.

Then he reaches out and touches Ian’s skin in a few places, gently, probingly. He can feel the maggots, feel how they’re feeding off what’s left of Ian’s body, chewing away at the flesh of him, hungry for scraps. And he can also feel, somewhere inside, a spark of Ian, what’s keeping him awake, alive. It’s familiar, somehow. Bright and copper and electric, but so small. Ready to blow out with one strong gust of wind, to break like the filament in a lightbulb, and then go dark forever.

Mickey spreads his hands wide across Ian’s shoulder blades, the tattoos on his knuckles flaring up to full brilliance. The maggots slow down, then start to glow and shrivel in on themselves, giving little dying twitches as they shrink down to nothing.

He lifts his hands, and drags his fingers across the places where the maggots had embedded themselves. The holes glow and start to close up. Ian’s harsh breathing suddenly eases, and he takes a couple of deep, gasping lungfuls of air.

Mickey leans forward and presses his hand against the skin between Ian’s shoulders.

It’s not visible, but somehow he can feel the little copper spark inside Ian flare up in response, like he’d blown on a dying ember in a bonfire. He presses his hand down again for a second, feels the thrum of life inside Ian’s body—for now, anyway—and then pulls away.

Instantly, time revs back up again. Everything swims for a second, and he shakes his head, trying to clear it.

“Shit,” Ian hisses, then groans and rolls onto his side, curled up in a ball. “Ow.”

“You OK?” says Mickey, one hand on Ian’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” Ian says shakily. “It was the maggots, wasn’t it?”

“Guess so,” Mickey says. He doesn’t want to describe what they were doing. He doesn’t want to think about it.

“Well, thanks for—whatever you did.” Ian pushes himself up, and yeah, he looks better now.

“Think you can walk?” Mickey scans the horizon. Empty so far. They should probably get moving before something else shows up.

“Yeah,” Ian says. He jerks his head in the direction the plane disappeared. “It was that way. But how’re we going to keep moving in a straight line? There’s nothing to steer by, once we leave the boat behind.”

Mickey looks around, but there’s no trees, no poles, no buildings. Just concrete and empty blue sky, stretching on forever.

“Got any breadcrumbs?” he says after a second.

Ian gives him a flat look. Definitely feeling better.

“I don’t know, man,” Mickey says finally. “Guess we should just wing it, and hope another plane shows up if we head off track.”

“We’ll end up walking in circles,” Ian argues. Then he stops. “Can you do what you did to the boat again?”

“Got news for you. That boat ain’t gonna do shit for us on this,” Mickey says, scuffing his foot against the gritty concrete.

“Not to the boat,” Ian says, annoyed. “To the gun.”

“The _gun_?”

“Here, gimme.” Ian holds out his hand, but Mickey hesitates. “C’mon, Mickey. Give it.”

“Jeez, OK, chill out.” He reaches back, takes the gun out of his waistband, checks the safety, and hands it to Ian.

Ian drops to his knees, then puts the gun down on the concrete.

“Hey!” Mickey protests. Ian ignores him, and gives the barrel a gentle push. The gun spins smoothly in a circle, wobbling at the end when it comes to a stop. Ian looks up at him and grins.

“See?”

“I see you playing the world’s weirdest game of Spin the Bottle, all alone in the middle of nowhere,” Mickey says, but he thinks he can see what Ian’s getting at. He crouches down and puts a few fingers on the gun, then closes his eyes.

He tries to do the same thing he did before, gathering all the pictures and memories he has of the airport into his brain. But they’re not coming like they did before.

“Quit starin’ at me,” he says to Ian, eyes still closed.

“What do you want me to do? There’s nothing else here,” Ian says.

“Jesus, look at the sky or something. Just quit staring. You’re making me nervous.”

“OK, OK.”

Mickey cracks an eye, but Ian’s obediently turned his back and has his head tilted up toward the blank blue sky. Satisfied, Mickey puts both hands on the gun. He still feels kind of stupid, but not as stupid as he did when Ian was looking at him, at least.

Anyway, he’ll do basically any stupid thing at this point. Monster hunting, making compasses out of guns—whatever it takes. Anything to get the hell out of here, get things back the way they should be.

Actually, there’s an idea.

_Get us the fuck out of here,_ he thinks. Heat flares up under his hands, the gun glowing for a second with the same white light as his tattoos.

He opens his eyes, presses his hand once against the butt of the gun, then spins it, hard.

Ian turns back around, and together they watch it start to slow down, then finally stop with the barrel pointing in exactly the direction the plane had gone. Ian grins.

“Could be a coincidence,” he says. “Better do it again, just to be sure.”

Mickey nods, and spins the gun again. _Home,_ he thinks. _We gotta get home._

The gun comes to a stop, pointing the way ahead.

“OK,” says Mickey. “Let’s go.”

 

Once the boat is out of sight, Mickey stops and does the gun thing again, to make sure they’re headed the right way. It’s hard to keep track of time out here. He doesn’t seem to get hungry or thirsty. His legs don’t hurt. The only thing that gives him a sense of time is counting their footsteps.

He loses track somewhere in the two thousands. For the last couple hundred steps, Ian’s been looking up at him every minute or so, studying his face, then looking away again as soon as Mickey looks back. It’s distracting.

“All right, what’s the deal?” Mickey says finally.

“What do you mean?” Ian says. His face is innocently blank.

“You’re staring. What, are my eyes going like that fly-guy’s?”

“No,” says Ian, and he’s laughing a little, maybe.

“Then what?” Mickey says. “C’mon, man. Spill.”

“It’s nothing,” Ian mumbles. “It’s just—were we . . . were we friends, in the future? Or the real world, whatever. The place you came from. Did we get along?”

_Christ._ “Yeah,” Mickey says after an awkward pause. “I mean, not at first. But later, yeah.”

“OK,” says Ian. “Did I, like, tell you stuff? Did we ever talk about—I don’t know . . . stuff?”

_Stuff?_

_Oh._

“Stuff about—guys, you mean?” Mickey says cautiously, looking at Ian out of the corner of his eye.

“Yeah.” Ian looks relieved.

“Sure, you told me,” Mickey says. “Well—” _Yeah, no, not going there._ “Yeah, I knew.”

“Is that . . . what happened to me?” Ian says.

For a second, Mickey doesn’t put it together, what Ian’s actually asking. But when he does—

“Shit. Ian, no. That’s not—No.”

“I don’t wanna know how,” Ian says quickly. “But just—was it . . . was it bad? Do you think . . .” He swallows. “Do you think it hurt?”

The answer is pretty definitely no, considering how high Ian had been at the club. It was probably just like passing out, or falling asleep.

But Mickey doesn’t think he can get it out. His throat’s closed up again.

“Mickey?” Ian says after a second.

“No,” Mickey says. “No, it didn’t.”

There’s a whole lot of other questions Ian could ask, seeing as how he knows that Mickey knows what happened now. Like, _Where were you when I was fucking high as a kite and passed out in an alleyway in Boystown in the middle of January?_

Well, maybe not that specific. But “where were you” would be a fair question to start with.

But Ian doesn’t ask that. He’s moved on to something else.

“Did I ever . . . did I date anyone?”

“Uh, kind of,” Mickey says. It’s definitely a stretch to consider whatever Ian and Kash had going on dating, but what’s he supposed to do, tell the kid no?

“Girl or guy?” _Fake or real?_ is what he’s actually asking.

“Uh, you dated my sister for a while.”

“Seriously?” Ian laughs. “Mandy? She’s so . . .”

“Hey, watch yourself,” Mickey says, and he can’t stop himself from smiling. Mandy would be laughing her ass off if she could see him right now, getting the third degree from a ten-year-old Ian Gallagher about his dating history.

“What about guys?” Ian says, openly curious now.

And Mickey can’t lie to him. But he can’t tell him the truth, either. Not now.

“There was . . . this one guy,” he says, then stops.

“Yeah?” Ian prompts after a second.

“Yeah,” says Mickey. “He . . . he was kind of a prick, to be honest. Fucked things up a lot.”

“What kind of things?” Ian says. Mickey laughs, but there’s no humor in it.

“Basically everything,” he says. “He—he tried to keep you safe. But he wasn’t real good at it.” He sneaks a look at Ian.

“I’m pretty good at taking care of myself, you know,” Ian says, with all the confidence of a kid. “Lots of practice.”

“Yeah, man,” Mickey says softly. “I know.”

“Did he—” Ian starts, then stops, looking embarrassed.

“What?” Mickey says.

“It’s dumb.”

“So what? Who gives a shit?” He waves an arm. “There’s no one out here but us. And I ain’t gonna judge.”

Ian looks at the ground. “Do you think he loved me?”

Mickey’s heart pounds painfully. “Yeah,” he says. “He did. He—he does. A lot.”

“Yeah?” Ian has a little smile on his face. “That’s cool.”

“Yeah,” Mickey echoes. “Cool.” There’s a stupid smile creeping up on his face. He can feel it.

“Hey, better stop and check the direction again,” Ian says. Mickey crouches down, spins the gun.

“Shit,” he says. They’ve drifted—the gun is pointing off sharply to the right. “This thing better be working. I don’t see anything.”

Ian’s squinting ahead, staring intently at the horizon. “There’s . . . something,” he says hesitantly. “I can’t see what. It just looks like a haze.” He swipes a hand across his mouth. “Maybe it’s water or something. I’m so thirsty.”

Mickey freezes. “What?” he says.

“I told you, I can’t see what it is. It’s too far away.”

“Not that,” says Mickey. “Did you just say you’re thirsty?”

“Yeah, so what?” says Ian. “Aren’t you? We’ve been walking for hours.”

“No,” says Mickey. “Haven’t been hungry or thirsty the whole time we’ve been in this fucking place. And neither were you, until just now.”

Ian licks his lips uncomfortably. They do look kind of chapped, now that Mickey’s looking.

“Shit,” says Ian. “What do you think it means?”

“No idea. But it probably ain’t good.”

Ian sighs. “Well, it doesn’t matter anyway. We don’t have any water.”

“Yeah,” says Mickey. “Just . . . be careful, though, all right?”

“OK,” says Ian, annoyed. “I’ll be careful to not drink any of the water we don’t have. Come on, it’s not like I can die twice, right?”

“Hey!” Mickey snaps. “Don’t fucking joke about it, OK? It’s not fucking funny.”

Ian gives him a look. “What’s the problem? It’s not like it happened to you.”

“No,” says Mickey. “I’m just the one who fucking found you. So excuse me if I don’t think it’s exactly a barrel of laughs yet.”

“Oh,” says Ian. He opens his mouth like he wants to say something, then closes it again, looking awkward. Because really, what’s he supposed to say?

Mickey takes a deep breath, then another one.

“I’m sorry,” he says after a second. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s . . . it’s fine,” says Ian. “I won’t talk about it anymore, if you don’t want.”

“Ian, no. Look, it’s not . . . You can talk about whatever you want, OK? I’m just—” He stops. He can’t lay this on Ian, not now, not when he doesn’t know or remember. When he can’t understand.

Mickey misses Ian, _his_ Ian, so badly for a second, he almost can’t breathe.

“No, really, it’s fine,” Ian says, filling the awkward pause.

It’s not. If there’s one thing Mickey’s learned by now, it’s how to tell when Ian’s hurt and trying to hide it. But he doesn’t know how to fix it. He never has.

“C’mon,” Ian says after another second. “We should keep moving. I feel like we’re getting close.”

Mickey doesn’t buy it—the “we’re getting close” thing—but Ian’s not wrong, either. The longer they stand here chatting, the more likely it is that something will find them before they can find what they’re looking for.

“Yeah,” Mickey says finally. “OK.”

 

It turns out that Ian has better eyes than Mickey. At first, Mickey doesn’t think there’s anything on the horizon at all. After another fifteen minutes, he can finally pick out a fuzzy blur, but he still thinks it might be a mirage or something. Like his eyes are trying to create something out of nothing.

“I think I’m gonna check the direction again,” he says after a while.

“No!” Ian says, annoyed, his eyes trained stubbornly ahead. “We shouldn’t stop. It’s right there.”

Mickey looks down at him. He doesn’t look like he did in the boat, all pale and still. His eyes are bright and his face is flushed. Too flushed, like he has a fever. His lips are dry and cracked.

_It’s this fucking place_ , Mickey thinks. It’s trying to devour him, any way it can. It tried to chew him up, digest him when they weren’t paying attention. And since that didn’t work, it’s going to burn him up from the inside out instead.

“You OK?” he asks cautiously.

“Fine,” Ian says through gritted teeth. “Can we just keep going? Please?”

“Hey,” says Mickey. “Don’t lie, OK? If there’s something—”

Ian sighs, and all the fight goes out of him. “It feels like . . .” He waves a hand at his chest. “I don’t know. Something’s wrong, and I can’t—” He stops. His eyes are bright and wet.

“I don’t want to die,” he says quietly after a second.

“I’m not gonna let you,” Mickey says, and he’s never meant anything so much in his fucking life. It’s not even a promise. It’s a fucking fact.

“OK,” Ian whispers.

Mickey nods. “Good. Glad we got that figured out. Let’s get moving.”

 

Before they’re even halfway to the weird haze on the horizon, they spot something closer to home.

Burn marks. Huge streaks of black on the concrete, each one as long as a semi truck. There’s probably ten or fifteen of them, stretching out in the direction they’re walking.

“What could do that?” Ian says, unnerved. “There’s nothing to burn out here.”

Mickey shrugs, trying to seem unconcerned. “Could be anything. Maybe one of the planes crashed or something.”

“There’s no wreckage,” Ian says.

“OK, so maybe it was spontaneous fucking combustion. This place doesn’t exactly play by the normal laws of physics.”

Ian shakes his head.

At the edge of the last burn, they find a little pile of bones, blackened and crumbling.

Mickey nudges it with his foot, and the bones disintegrate into ash and charcoal.

“Shit,” Ian says.

“C’mon,” Mickey says after a second. “Can’t do anything about it now.” Ian nods, looking sick to his stomach.

 

Mickey lost count of their steps when they stopped to look at the bones, so now he starts again.

Seven thousand. Eight thousand.

He starts mumbling the numbers out loud, trying to keep them straight, and Ian counts with him for a while. But eventually he stops counting. Then he stops saying anything at all.

Around nine thousand, Ian starts stumbling.

Silently, Mickey stows the gun and crouches down, holding his arms out behind him.

Ian shakes his head, but he’s not actually refusing. Just tired. Maybe he would be angry, if he had enough energy, but he doesn’t. Instead he leans against Mickey’s back and wraps his arms around Mickey’s neck with a sigh.

He’s so feverish now, Mickey can feel the unnatural heat of him through both their shirts. But there’s no water, no shade. Nothing he can do to help. Nothing except to keep walking. So that’s what he does. The haze gets closer and closer, until finally there are little wisps of fog on either side of them.

“Do you see them?” Ian whispers in his ear. Mickey wants to laugh with desperate relief at hearing him talking again.

“See what?” he says instead.

“The faces.”

For a second, he thinks Ian’s lost it. But as the fog gets thicker, Mickey starts to see them too: half-visible glimpses of people staring out at them. Not speaking or screaming like the souls under the bridge downtown. Just staring, empty and sad.

“Ignore ’em,” Mickey says. “They can’t touch us. Just fuckin’ ghosts.” He hopes it’s true.

Ian giggles, sounding out of it. “Boo!” he says. Then, “Sorry, Mickey. No more jokes about death.”

“That’s right,” says Mickey, desperate to keep him conscious, keep him talking. “This is a no-joke zone, OK? No funny business.”

“I’ll tell the ghosts,” Ian says seriously.

“It’s cool, man. I think they know.”

“Hope so,” Ian mutters, and now his words are slurred. Mickey turns his head, and sees that Ian’s eyes have drifted shut.

“Hey, wake up,” he says, and jerks his shoulder, jostling Ian’s head harder than he means to. “C’mon, Ian. Keep it together. I need you here, OK? Stay with me.”

“Yeah?” Ian says. _Shit._ Maybe those were the magic words, the one perfect thing Mickey could have said to stop him from going in the first place. To make it so none of this ever happened.

(But he knows it doesn’t matter. He couldn’t have said it then. Maybe he can only say it now because Ian doesn’t know what it really means.)

“Yeah,” Mickey finally says. “We’re a two-for-one deal now, OK?”

“Fiona likes those,” Ian mumbles. “Where’s Fiona?”

“She’s not here, remember? She had to send me instead.”

“Don’t believe you,” says Ian forcefully. “She’s here. Fiona takes care of us. That’s her _job_.”

“Yeah, well, everyone needs help sometimes. I’m helping her take care of you. That’s my job.”

“Fiona,” Ian says again, fitfully. Mickey sighs.

“I’m sorry, man. She ain’t here.”

“Don’t be sorry!” Ian says, and now he sounds angry, but not real angry. Just loud, the way someone sounds while they’re sleep-talking. “You’re good too. I think—I think I remember you—” He laughs. “I don’t know. I don’t.”

“Yeah, well, let’s keep it that way,” Mickey mutters, and he feels stupid, but yeah. He doesn’t want some kid remembering any of the stuff Ian and him have done. Even if the kid is actually Ian.

Luckily, before they can get any farther into that minefield, a building looms out of the mist ahead.

“Oh thank fuck,” Mickey breathes. “Ian, you gotta get it together, man. We made it.”

Ian stirs, but doesn’t say anything back.

“Ian! Shit.”

The wall in front of them is as blank and featureless as the concrete ocean they just crossed: no doors, no windows, not even a crack.

“Shit,” Mickey says again, and shifts Ian a little on his back. It’s starting to get harder to hold him up—the first time since they got here that Mickey’s felt tired. Maybe being so close to Ian means the effects are starting to rub off on him. Or maybe it’s just taken longer for this place to get to him. Either way, fuck.

He looks as far as he can through the fog on either side, but there’s nothing. He’s just going to have to walk around and see what he can find. His arms and legs ache just thinking about it.

“Do we have our tickets?” Ian asks drowsily from behind him.

“Huh?” says Mickey, distracted.

“For the plane.”

“No, we’re not—” He stops. Actually . . .

It’s hard to maneuver the gun out, twisting one arm around Ian’s leg and trying to support all the rest of his weight with the other, but Mickey manages it in the end. Then he realizes he’s going to have to put Ian down anyway, and rolls his eyes at himself.

“Sorry, buddy,” he says as he gently lowers Ian to the ground, props him up against the concrete wall. His eyes are closed, and he’s frowning. His face is pale and sweaty.

Mickey stands up and studies the blank wall for a second. He has no clue what he’s looking for. But he knows what he wants.

He grips the gun tightly in his left hand, and clenches his right hand into a fist. Scowling, he closes his eyes and pictures a door in front of them, like a service entrance. Something unobtrusive, in case someone inside is watching.

He feels the tattoos on his right knuckles flare to life, then raises his fist and pushes it against the wall.

“Open sesame, motherfuckers,” he mutters, and grinds his fist into the concrete until he feels blood start to well up.

Then, almost scared to look, he slowly opens his eyes.

The door is right in front of him, dull gray metal with a smear of red from his blood. It looks real, solid. Mickey turns to share his triumph with Ian, but his smile dies when he sees that Ian’s totally passed out again.

Mickey doesn’t think he can carry Ian piggyback if Ian isn’t helping. Which basically leaves him with a fireman’s carry.

“All right, c’mon, man,” he says. God, the kid is so small. When he’s up on Mickey’s shoulder, it’s clear that he barely weighs anything.

Mickey grimaces and pushes the door open with his other shoulder.

A rush of cool air hits his face, and he almost steps back in surprise. Then he settles Ian more firmly on his shoulder, and shoves the rest of the way through the door. It slams behind him and disappears back into the wall like it had never existed.

“Great,” Mickey mutters, and turns to see where they are.

The room in front of him is huge and echoing. It looks more like a hangar than an airport terminal.

The truth is, his memories of O’Hare aren’t the clearest. He hasn’t been inside since he was about ten. But he’s pretty sure the roof didn’t open up into what looks like outer space.

“Whoa,” he whispers, and even with everything that’s happened, it’s hard not to get lost in the blaze of stars in the clear night sky up above. They’re bright, and closer than they should be. He can’t look away—until Ian stirs, jerking him out of his reverie.

He blinks and drags his gaze back down to the room around them. Scattered all around are little gatherings of mist, like the ones with the indistinct faces outside. Lost souls, drifting, trying to find . . . he doesn’t know what.

There are more piles of burnt bones, scattered here and there across the floor.

In the middle of the room, there’s a wide, sunken pool of water, with steps leading down. It’s totally still, reflecting the sky above so clearly that it looks like there’s a hole in the floor filled with stars. Mickey wants to run toward it, but he can’t do it without jostling Ian, so he walks as quickly as he can, avoiding the bones and the wisps of mists.

His footsteps ring out louder than he’d like, but all he can think of is the frightening heat of Ian’s body, and his scared face. _I don’t want to die._

Finally he’s standing in front of the pool, and he crouches down, pulls Ian over his shoulder and gently lowers him until he’s lying on the top stair. Mickey plunges a hand into the water—it’s icy, and his fingers instantly go numb—and scoops some up, then splashes it on Ian’s face.

Ian groans and turns his face away, but Mickey reaches down and does it again, rests his freezing hand on Ian’s forehead.

“Ian?” Mickey says. “Say something, OK? If you can?”

“Mmm,” Ian says, and he makes a face, his eyes squinting open. Mickey lets out a choked laugh, and cradles his face. Ian flinches away from his cold hand, but Mickey doesn’t care—he’s awake, he’s aware. He’s going to be OK.

For a second, Mickey thinks about dunking Ian’s whole body in the water to cool him down, but that doesn’t seem like a good idea. He thinks of glass shattering when it gets too cold too fast. Imagines Ian’s heart struggling to keep up, beating too fast trying to keep his blood moving.

Instead he scoops up another handful of water and pours it on Ian’s face, watches the drops run down his nose, across his cheeks.

“Water?” Ian croaks, and Mickey remembers how thirsty he was. His lips are dry and cracked. But something else, some little whisper in the back of his mind makes him think about rivers that make you forget . . .

Then again, maybe forgetting is exactly what Ian needs to do.

Mickey reaches into the water again, and lifts a handful to Ian’s mouth. He tips Ian’s head up with the other, helps him drink it down. Then another, and another.

Ian finally tilts his head away with a sigh, and Mickey lets him lie down again. His color is better already, more normal, and the frown is gone from his face.

After a second, Ian’s eyes flutter open, and he stares up at stars. “Whoa,” he says. “Where are we?”

“What do you remember? What’s the last thing?” Mickey says anxiously.

“We were—” Ian stops, looks confused. “We were in the boat, on the river. I think I fell asleep? Sorry. I don’t—”

Mickey runs a shaky hand over his own face. “It’s cool, man. Totally fine.”

“I feel . . .” Ian manages to sit up with Mickey’s hand under his elbow. “Yeah. Not good.”

“No kidding,” Mickey says. “For a second there, I thought . . .”

He trails off at the look on Ian’s face. He’s staring over Mickey’s shoulder. His eyes are wide, and all the color is drained from his cheeks again.

“Ian?” Mickey says. “What—” And then he slowly turns and sees it too, curled up at the far end of the empty room, sprawled on a huge white marble staircase that leads up and out of the building.

It’s a dragon.

 

Maybe the weirdest thing is that Mickey doesn’t even have a moment of doubt. He doesn’t spend any time thinking that it’s a trick, or a statue, or some kind of huge-ass mutated lizard.

It has huge leathery wings, folded against its back.

Its eyes are two ovals of dark green, the size of watermelons, with a narrow black slit in the middle.

Its mouth—snout?—is long and reptilian, like an alligator’s.

It’s unmistakably a living, breathing dragon.

He wonders, just for a second, if it’s watching him, as he stands there in the middle of the room, open-mouthed and scared, his heart pounding out of control.

But the huge head doesn’t raise from the steps. The eyes are totally still.

“Mickey?” Ian whispers, barely moving his mouth. “What . . . what’s it doing?”

“Do I look like a dragon scientist to you?” Mickey says softly. “I got nothing, man. Maybe it’s trying to decide whether it should have us as sushi or pan-fried.”

_“Holy shit,”_ Ian hisses. “It’s gonna _eat us._ ”

“Chill out,” Mickey says, and lays a hand on Ian’s shoulder, even though he thinks he’s probably shaking too. “This is what we’re here for, remember? This must be it. It _has_ to be. We just gotta—get rid of it, and we can get out of here. Go back home.”

“Back home,” Ian echoes, but his eyes are still fixed on the dragon. “Uh, Mickey? How are we going to kill it with a gun that size?”

Mickey rubs at his mouth. It’s a pretty decent question.

“Shot to the eye,” he says at last. “Doesn’t matter how big it is, a shot to the eye that goes into the brain, and that’s the end of it.”

“Gonna have to get pretty close,” Ian says. “Really close.”

“You’re not wrong,” Mickey says. He’s a pretty good shot. Seventeen-year-old Ian is a better one, though, and fuck, Mickey wishes he were here right now. If he misses, he’s never going to get a second chance. He’s going to be a little pile on bones on the floor.

Barely moving his head, Mickey tries to study the sides of the room, looking for a way to get close enough to make the shot without being instantly obvious. What he sees isn’t encouraging: just wide open floor on either side of the staircase. If he can get to the wall, he can at least try to stay out of its direct line of vision, though.

“Maybe I can distract it?” Ian says, and he starts to stand up. Mickey grabs his arm way too hard, panicking.

“Don’t,” he hisses. “Fucking—stay still, Ian. Let me deal with this.”

Ian sets his jaw, but sits back down on the step.

Mickey takes a few deep breaths, then stills his mind—or tries to, anyway. “Invisible,” he whispers, and wills it as hard as he can. After a few seconds, he holds up his arm. Ian looks at it for a second, then shakes his head.

“Nope.”

“Fuck,” Mickey says. They’re so close. So _fucking_ close. His heart is thumping, and he feels like in a second, he’s just going to fucking run for it. Run at the thing headfirst, hope that he can make the shot from the front, and go out in a fucking blaze of glory. Probably literally. He thinks Moira will hold up her end of the deal and send Ian home.

Maybe.

Probably not, though. And shit, if he has to die, he has to die. But he isn’t going to die for nothing.

Ian watches him quietly for a few seconds, then shakes his head. “I’m going,” he says, and he’s up and moving across the floor before Mickey can even get it together enough to grab him again.

“Ian, fuck, _no_ ,” he whispers as loudly as he dares. But Ian keeps walking, straight across the wide floor toward the dragon at the far end, and damnit, Mickey’s gotta move. Now.

He pushes himself to his feet, and takes the gun in hand one last time. Then he pelts for the wall on the right side of the room.

Instantly he feels like the dragon’s eyes are drilling holes into his back, but a quick glance to the side confirms that it hasn’t moved, even while Ian gets steadily closer and closer.

Mickey hits the wall and slides down to the floor, making himself as small as possible. He wants to flag Ian down, tell him to stop, but he knows that’ll just draw more attention to both of them. So he starts to creep, as quickly and quietly as he can, down the length of the room toward the thing. The dragon. _Fuck._

Actually, why _isn’t_ Ian stopping? It’s been about a minute now, more than enough time for Mickey to have made a run for it, but Ian’s still walking steadily closer. Is he—

“Hey,” Ian says, and Mickey almost dies of a heart attack right there.

The dragon blinks, slowly, and finally seems to notice Ian standing right in front of it.

_“No,”_ it rumbles, and little clouds of smoke or steam escape from its mouth. Ian takes a step back—its breath must be hot, like standing in front of an oven. But then he steps forward again.

“What are you doing here?” Ian says. The dragon’s eyes flicker, and it starts to raise its head. Ian freezes, and the dragon settles back onto the stairs with another huff of breath.

_“No one goes,”_ it says, and Mickey can feel the vibrations inside his chest, like the bass at a rock concert. _“We don’t go, so no one goes.”_

“Oh,” Ian says. “Is that the way people are supposed to leave? Up those stairs?”

The dragon makes a low, discontent grumbling noise. Then it raises its head, and breathes more hot air at Ian. He doubles over, coughing. _“No one goes,”_ it repeats.

“All right, all right,” Ian says, his hands up, catching his breath. “Mickey, no! Wait! NO!”

From his crouch off to the right, gun raised to take the shot, Mickey freezes. “What the—” he says, hastily lowering the gun as the dragon’s huge head swings around to face him.

“Don’t,” Ian says. “Just let me talk to it for a second, OK?”

“The fuck are you talking about?” Mickey hisses. “This is what we’re supposed to do! This is why we’re here!” Now that the element of surprise is gone, he doesn’t know why the dragon hasn’t just roasted them both.

It’s eyeing him like it’s wondering the same thing.

_“‘The form doesn’t matter,’”_ Ian says. “Why would she say that? Why wouldn’t she just tell us what it was?”

“I don’t know, so we didn’t run screaming in the other direction?” Mickey says. He’s pretty seriously considering running for it right now. If he were closer to Ian, he’d grab him and book it up the stairs, dragon be damned.

“No,” Ian says. “That’s not it. It’s because she didn’t know.”

“What?” Mickey says. “How could she not fucking know—”

“Because this isn’t its real form,” Ian says. “And it can look like whatever it wants, right?” He turns to the dragon, reaches out for it. Mickey starts forward, gun at the ready, but Ian holds up his other hand.

“Hey,” he says, speaking to it softly now, as he settles one hand on its snout. “Hey, I know that dragon. My little sister used to love that movie when she was a kid. She liked the fairies better, though. And the prince.” The dragon’s eyes are fixed on Ian, watching his every move, but it doesn’t say anything.

“Do you want to come out now?” Ian says gently, like he’s coaxing a scared kid out of a hiding place.

It shifts suddenly, resettles its wings.

“ _Can_ you?” Ian says in the same voice, and the dragon grumbles lowly.

“Mickey,” Ian says, turning to look at him. “You have to help it.”

“What? How?” Mickey says. He stands up and walks over to Ian. The heat radiating off the dragon is incredible, like the waves off hot pavement in the dog days of summer.

“I don’t know! Do whatever you did to the boat,” Ian says. “Make it so it can be what it’s supposed to be.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Mickey says. Ian rolls his eyes, grabs Mickey’s left hand, and plants it on the side of the dragon’s face, closer to the mouth than Mickey would like.

“Just try?” Ian says. “Please?”

Mickey sighs and closes his eyes.

He remembers that copper spark inside of Ian, the burning essence of everything that makes him _Ian_. Moving his hand across the dragon’s scales, he tries to search for the same thing.

He’s expecting it to be a raging green inferno, but instead there’s . . . nothing. Just cold, empty space. He frowns and searches deeper.

_There._ Far, far down, a little pale spark at the bottom of a deep, dark well.

Two pale sparks. Trembling, on the very edge of being extinguished, but clinging desperately.

“Hey,” Mickey says. “Hey, it’s OK. You’re OK. It’s gonna be fine.”

_“Whoa,”_ Ian whispers, and Mickey’s eyes open slowly.

His hand is resting on the shoulder of a black girl in a pink hoodie and jeans, maybe eight or so. She’s curled up on the stairs, and huddled in the protective curve of her body is a little boy, three or four. Her little brother. They’re both trembling, staring up at Ian and Mickey with wide, terrified eyes.

“Go away,” the girl whispers, and her voice is fierce. “We’re not gonna go.”

Ian crouches down next to them, reaching out, and they flinch away. “Sorry,” he says, drawing his hand back. “I’m sorry. What happened? What’s wrong?”

“Don’t remember,” the girl says. “But we’re not going.”

Mickey can’t imagine how she’s done it, kept them together and in one piece all the way to here, without any way to protect themselves. He knows he couldn’t have done it. Without . . . his mother, without the gun, he and Ian would both been wiped out back in the South Side.

But however she did it, it’s too late. Those little sparks, there isn’t enough to bring back to life. If he blows on them, they’re just going to go out. And she doesn’t remember anything. _The water,_ he thinks. _They drank the water._

“Hey,” Ian says. “I know. I don’t want to go, either.”

“Can you take us back?” the girl says, and the hope in her eyes is too much. Mickey looks away.

“Mickey?” Ian says.

Why is it that no matter what he does, he can’t seem to stop breaking Ian’s heart?

“Sorry,” he says, his throat tight. “I can’t—there’s not enough left. If she doesn’t remember, I can’t—”

“It’s OK,” Ian says, and he turns back to the kids.

“I have an idea,” he says. “What if we go together?”

She stares at him for a second, and then turns and looks up the stairs. Her face is half scared, half longing. Then she looks down at her brother, who blinks up at her with wide eyes.

“Yeah,” she says after a second. “Yeah, OK. If you go with us.”

“Ian,” Mickey whispers. “No. Please.”

“Hey,” Ian says, turning to look at him. His eyes are alive, and he’s smiling. “You’re here, OK? You’re here to remember for me. We’re going home.”

“I don’t—”

“Leave the gun here,” Ian says, and he stands, pulling the girl to her feet with one hand, and reaching out to Mickey with the other.

Well, what the fuck else is he supposed to do?

Mickey lays the gun on the ground, and takes Ian’s hand. Then he leans down and scoops up the little boy, who definitely doesn’t look like he’s going to be walking anywhere on his own right now.

“Do you know where it goes?” the girl asks Ian as they start to walk up the stairs, into the night sky above.

“I don’t,” he says. “I’m sorry. I wish I did.”

She sighs. “I didn’t know what else to do.” She sounds—old. Old and tired.

“I think you did great,” Ian says. “You took good care of him.”

She smiles. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

The girl nods, tilting her head up to stare at the stars again. “Gotta take care of him,” she says softly.

“Always,” Ian agrees.

The stairs and the night sky are starting to fade out around them, dissolving into a thin mist that gets blown gently away by the breeze. The boy in Mickey’s arms gets lighter and lighter, fading away.

After a few minutes, it’s just Ian and Mickey, standing in the middle of a field of grass and some kind of flower that Mickey’s never seen before. The sun is starting to peek over the horizon, and the air is cool.

Mickey turns to look at Ian, ask him which way he thinks they should go next.

Only it’s not the Ian that Mickey’s been trying to take care of this whole time.

It’s his Ian.

Standing there next to him, tall and healthy and whole, holding Mickey’s hand and smiling at him, eyes shining.

“Hey,” Ian says, and his smiles gets softer.

Mickey can’t say anything. Just stares.

“What’s wrong, Mick?” Ian says.

“You’re—” Mickey starts, then he swallows. “You’re here.”

“Yeah, well, you came and got me, didn’t you?”

Mickey nods. The tears are welling up again, and it was bad enough crying in front of an Ian who didn’t even know him. Now he’s can’t—he doesn’t—

“Hey, hey, Mickey, shhhh.” Ian lifts his hands, cups his face. “It’s fine. We’re fine.”

“Yeah,” Mickey says. “Yeah, it’s all good.” He tips their foreheads together, closes his eyes and savors the feeling of Ian standing there, so close.

He runs a wondering hand up Ian’s arm, then grips the back of his neck tight.

“Didn’t think I was gonna see you again,” he says, and he doesn’t know if he means after Ian left, or after they got here—it’s been so long, just an empty feeling inside.

“Sorry,” Ian says. “It’s—it’s hard to explain. I don’t—”

Mickey shakes his head, shuts him up. They’ll have time to talk about it. For now he just wants to stand here, feel Ian’s body near his: real, solid, alive.

Ian leans forward and kisses him. It’s sweet and gentle in a way their kisses usually aren’t. Mickey breathes into it for a second, then grabs Ian’s shoulders and pulls him close.

“I love you,” he whispers against Ian’s lips.

“Mickey—” Ian says, and there’s pain in his voice. “I don’t think—when we go back, I don’t think I’m going to remember.”

“’S okay,” Mickey breathes. “Just wanted to tell you.”

“Okay,” Ian whispers back, and kisses him again.

The sun is burning against the back of Mickey’s neck by the time they let each other go, and the sky is bright blue.

“Which way?” Mickey says. He doesn’t let go of Ian’s hand. Fuck it. There’s no one here to see them.

“I don’t think it matters,” Ian says. He can’t seem to stop smiling, and the sunlight behind his head makes his hair burn bright. Mickey touches his face again for a second, feels that copper spark burning bright and hot inside.

“OK,” Mickey says. “Then let’s get the fuck out of here.”

And they go.

 

Mickey wakes up slowly, blinking at the white ceiling above him. His whole body aches.

He groans and rolls onto his side, then lifts his arms and looks at them.

Nothing. No blood.

Wait. Why did he think there would be blood?

He sits up, looking around for the skull. _Why would the skull be here?_ It doesn’t matter. It’s not there. He shakes his head, trying to clear it. _A body, lying in the snow._

Mickey bolts to his feet, every muscle screaming, and staggers to his room, leaning on the door frame.

Ian’s lying in his bed, asleep, chest rising and falling. Mickey stares and stares at him, drinking it in. His heart is pounding wildly, and he doesn’t even know why.

The shower shuts off with a clunk, and silence falls in the house. Mickey runs a shaking hand over his face, and walks into his room. Sits in the chair next to the bed. Looks at Ian breathing, and feels—relief. A warm certainty that everything’s going to be all right.

_I don’t think I’m going to remember_ , he hears Ian’s voice in his head. But it’s a scrap, a whisper. It doesn’t mean anything.

Ian’s here. That’s all that matters. They’ll figure the rest out. Together.

 

Ian’s here, and everything is wrong. Mickey can’t breathe.

“I can take care of him, OK?” he says. “Let me take care of him until he’s better.” _Don’t take him away. Not again._

Fiona’s standing in front of him, hands outstretched, and Ian said it was Fiona’s job to take care of him, but it looks to Mickey like she doesn’t even want to try. Behind them, Ian is lying in bed, pale and dead-looking.

“It’s almost impossible to handle,” Fiona says.

But Mickey sees a sunrise, the light on Ian’s hair, and an endless blue sky above them. He doesn’t know what it means, but he knows. He knows. He takes a breath.

“Don’t fucking tell me what’s impossible.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've tagged this with Major Character Death because the premise depends on Ian dying during 4x7, and I don't want to upset anyone who doesn't want to read a story based on that premise. But it is temporary, and he's with Mickey for the entire story, besides the beginning.
> 
> I've also tagged for Suicidal Imagery because of what Mickey does to follow Ian into the underworld. He's not really aware of why he's doing it (he's kind of in a magical fugue state), but the imagery may be upsetting (blood, etc).
> 
> The rest of the tags are for the kinds of things you might see in a horror movie that is set in Purgatory: tortured souls, some blood and gore, and a gross scene involving maggots. God, I hate maggots.


End file.
